On taking control

In eighth and ninth grades, I wasn't quite sure who I was.  I was kind of rolling with the waves without really knowing how or where or when to take control of the tide, instead allowing myself to kind of drift along to the rhythm of the world.  Whenever I wasn't sure what was going on, it seemed like I would always revert back to one of the most potent lyrics I've ever heard.

"...And life barrels on like a runaway train..."

The world was on track, sure, but I wasn't quite sure where it was going, I wasn't quite sure if I'd make it there without derailing, and I wasn't sure if I even wanted to be on board, but I sure as hell knew that I was on that train.  That's about as far as I was comfortable reaching though.  I assumed that someone else would take the wheel.

Now, I've written about my love of the musical stylings of Ben Folds before, and I maintain that he's the Elton John/Billy Joel of our generation and is without a doubt a musical genius, but in this case he's wrong.

About a week ago my best friend told me that a baseball team, Los Cardenales del Parque San Luis (St. Louis Park, MN Cardinals), full of Mexican guys from his workplace needed a few extra pitchers, and that we were the guys for the job.  I obviously agreed immediately, and was pumped until I realized what it would entail.  I'd have to join a team of 15 guys who I'd never met before, they all spoke Spanish, and I hadn't thrown to a batter in three years.  I was terrified.  I thought about backing out.  I already knew I would hate the entire thing.

Baseball is, without a doubt, my favorite thing in the entire world.  It's beautiful, it's poetic, and for years and years it was mine, from the backyard to the State Championship, I knew the game and it knew me and dammit if we didn't love each other, but I still couldn't pull it together enough to lace up the spikes.  The only reason I went to the field on Sunday was because I couldn't bear bailing on my buddy.  The train was running away and I was hiding in the caboose.

So I got to the field, was told I was the starting pitcher, didn't have any control during warmups, walked the first batter on four pitchers, and drilled a guy with the next pitch after that.  Not exactly the way to impress a new group of teammates.

I managed to get out of the inning, though, and Arturo, the manager, pulled me aside.  I couldn't really understand what he said other than, "settle down," and what must have been Spanish for, "How the hell did I get suckered into signing this kid up."

Something funny happens when everything goes wrong though; you realize that it can't get any worse.  I didn't get pulled, so I went back out for the second inning, fully confident that there was no way that I could pitch any worse than I had in the first, and I put down the other side 1-2-3.  My outing ended after 5 innings, with 8 strikeouts and only 2 walks (plus 2 hit batters, but who's counting?), and I didn't give up a run after the first.  And the only difference was my attitude.

Young William delivers for Los Cardenales del Parque San Luis

The train was still barreling down the same track as it always had been, but instead of hiding in the back and expecting the worst, I picked myself up and took the controls.  Instead of embarrassing myself I pitched my longest, and best statistical, outing since I was 14 years old.  Instead of letting my teammates down, I was getting fist bumps between innings and Modelos after the game.  Instead of seeing the train as a runaway I saw the train as my own, and even though it was flying down a track that I didn't know the destination of, I could see far enough ahead to get it there.

La cerveza oficial de Los Cardenales

There's never a way to stop the train.  It's moving and you're on it and there's nothing you can do about that.  What you can control is whether or not you want to take it in your hands.  After all, life can be a runaway and you can hide and you can wait and watch, but what does that give you?  There's not much to be personally proud of, nothing is your responsibility or your fault, there's nothing that you can look back on and say, "that scared the hell out of me but I did it anyway."

Life is going to take me someplace, but I want to be the one who gets me there.  I want to be in the engine, at the controls, and I want to be looking out the front window to see where I'm going and the sides to see where I am instead of out the back to see where I was.  We can't change what's coming to us, but we can change how we handle it, and it's a lot more fun to stare it down and steer into it than to it is to let it run away with you.